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On 1 July 1981 the Chinese Communist Party celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of its foundation. To mark this occasion, the Party itself issued a statement summing up the experience of recent decades. It seems an appropriate time for outsiders as well to look back over the history of the past 60 years, in the hope of grasping long-term tendencies which may continue to influence events in the future.

China' trial of the “ gang of four ” and six other members of the “ Lin-Jiang cliques ” has attracted world-wide attention.* The Chinese press has pictured the trial as a landmark: the end of a lawless era, a successful test of the new legal system, and a demonstration that all are equal before the law.1 Contrary to Chinese leaders’ expectations, however, many observers have considered the trial as essentially a political rather than a legal exercise.2 On the other hand, the holding of this trial appeared to reflect, among other things, Beijing' desire to publicize its commitment to legality, and the controlled and selected reporting of the court sessions has given the outside world glimpses of the judicial process under China' new and emerging legal order.

Deng Tuo was a Party member in good standing, a veteran cadre from the 1930s, former editor of the People' Daily and in 1965 secretary for culture and education in the Beijing Party Committee. Then suddenly in the spring of 1966 attacks on Wu Han, a vice–mayor of Beijing, swelled to include Deng and by May drove him to death under an avalanche of accusations. Deng Tuo and his protector, Beijing Mayor Peng Zhen, together with most of the city' Party Committee fell in the first flashes of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution that finally spread throughout China and claimed its head of state, Liu Shaoqi.

Since 1978 the one-child family has been increasingly advocated as the key element of the Chinese family planning programme. But this policy has been regarded as being addressed primarily to the urban population. In the course of a research tour of several communes in Hebei and Guangdong Provinces and in Jiading county in Shanghai Municipality in June 1979, it was evident that the policy on family planning still pivoted round the norm of the two-child family. However, in a more recent research trip made in June 1980, the policy had changed: as of late 1979, newly-married couples were expected to restrict the size of their family to three persons. Two-child families were disapproved of, and the new norm was the one-child family.

The overthrow of the “ gang of four ” in the autumn of 1976 gave rise to I a flourishing of literary themes untouched for many years in China. The first major sign of thematic breakthrough appeared with the short story “ The Wounded ” in 1978. Written by Fudan University student Lu Xinhua, “ The Wounded ” was an indictment of life under the harsh policies of the “ gang of four.” The young writer presented a moving portrayal of one young woman's tragic misfortune due to her blind faith in the regime's rigid policies. From this story blossomed a great number of similar emotional exposures of the cruelties suffered under the “ gang,” and thus emerged a new genre of literature called “ literature of the wounded.” Although usually technically immature, these stories were very well received among the general populace thrilled to read at last truthful, if overdramatized, portrayals of what they themselves had seen or experienced all those years.

The Sixth Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) met in Beijing from 27 to 29 June 1981. On its agenda were two items: changes in the highest-level leadership of the CCP, and the “ Resolution on certain questions in the history of our party since the founding of the People's Republic of China.” ‘ Though the Plenum's decisions to a large extent confirmed and made official trends and policies that had become apparent during most of the previous year, they were nonetheless remarkable. The western press has, not unsurprisingly, focused on the replacement of Hua Guofeng by Hu Yaobang as Chairman of the CCP's Central Committee. However, the Plenum's reassessment of the Party's history since 1949; of the roles of Mao Zedong, Hua Guofeng and other CCP leaders; and of the nature of Mao Zedong Thought, are undoubtedly of greater significance in terms of the development of the People's Republic of China (PRC): as indeed is the fact of Hua Guofeng's demotion rather than his outright dismissal or “ purge.”